Beach Clean-up Crew

By Captain Larry Jarboe

This afternoon, we took the S4 combo out for a quick snorkel trip and beach clean-up.

We took 6 full bags and a box of trash off the only natural sand beach on the Atlantic in the heart of Pennekamp Park. Rattlesnake Key is centrally located in this Florida State Park and has very diverse plant life and a remarkably large hermit crab population which is protected from collectors.

It will take many trips to bring this beach to a relatively pristine state after so many years of neglect of our natural resources.

Fortunately, the Wavewalk S4’s have room for a good clean-up crew and maximum load capacity.

Rattlesnake Key actually has a pretty dark history beyond the ominous name.

In the 1970’s and 80’s, that soft sand spit was used as a landing strip to cushion the go fast Donzi drug boats to offload countless bales of marijuana.

After the disastrous “Wet Foot/ Dry Foot” policy was enacted by then President Bill Clinton, human traffickers in go faster boats used this same beach to put hundreds of Cubans onto American soil in search of unbelievable benefits offered by our own government agencies.

In his last two weeks of office, President Obama revoked Clinton’s terrible decision and effectively put up a wall between us and Caribbean immigration.

Now, we are using motorized kayaks to clean up our only natural sand beach on the Atlantic side of Key Largo.

No commentary here. Just an observation of history and current events.